Branch of BPI in France layoff 50 workers – Express

More than 50 workers of the branch of BPI in France will leave the bank until the end of march, following the closure of seven agencies in the country. At the end of January, the BPI, closed definitely the agencies of the branch of France, located in Argenteuil, Boulogne, Champigny, Drancy, Melun, Saint-Germain and Villejuif, keeping in operation only the agency headquarters in Paris, and the agency of Lyon.

This slimming of the commercial network will be accompanied by the output of more than 50 workers. The second confirmed to the Lusa sources of trade union, in recent months, the BPI has been negotiating with the trade unions, the French, the financial conditions of the output of these workers with the supervision of the labor authorities in france. A part of the employees will come out definitely of the BPI already at the end of this month and the remaining in the end of march. There are still two workers that belong to the BPI in Portugal who were displaced in France and that will return to their places of origin.

These closures happen at a time when the BIS goes on to be dominated (84,5%) by the Catalan CaixaBank. According to the prospect of the operation of public acquisition (OPA) of CaixaBank in the bank of portugal, the new owner of the bank was admitting to come to reduce the staff of 900 workers. This Wednesday, at the conference of press that presented the results of the tender offer, Gonzalo Gortázar, the chief executive officer of the institution, the Catalan said that “if it is a number only indicative. Do not anticipate a change in the policy followed by the BIS in recent years”. The manager has transmitted calm to the employees of the BPI: “don’t anticipate collective dismissals and terminations will always be by mutual agreement,” he said. Before that, Fernando Ulrich (who is now non-executive chairman of the BPI) said that to reduce 900 employees over three years is an effort equivalent to the one that the bank has done in the last several year s.

In fact, the BIS has been, in recent years, to reduce the number of workers. Moreover, the slimming of structures has been common to the major banks operating in Portugal, in an attempt to improve their outcomes. Only in 2016, came out of the bank 392 workers in Portugal, a number that “excludes temporary work”. In terms of costs, the BPI spent with personal 289,4 million euros, less than 1.5% over 2015. However, this value does not include the costs that the bank had with early retirement, of 59.7 million euros, but also do not consider the savings arising from the revision of the Collective Labour Agreement of the banking sector, totaling 42.9 million euros.

In the total activity of the domestic and the international, the BPI Group had, at the end of 2016, 8.157 workers, less 372 employees, which meant that in the activity outside of the Uk the bank has hired 20 people in net terms. The BPI Group had profits of 313,2 million euros in 2016, more to 32.5% of that in 2015, more than half relating to the international activity, in particular to the Banco de Fomento de Angola (BFA).